PC Troubleshooting Guide

When a Bad-Ass Fan Ain’t Enough

For your CPU that is, for however high-tech or expensive a CPU cooling fan is dust kills all that dough you put into buying it. That’s a simple truth many forget to remember and they end up with burnt up CPU’s, literally. CPU’s tend to operate at a high temperature and can handle a maximum of around the boiling point of water or 100 Degrees Centigrade. More than that and components start to fry and eventually fail.

Though you wouldn’t see burnt CPU’s everyday, a component running hotter than usual can lead to mysterious pc crashes and problems such as intermittent errors that you could not diagnose. Take a peek inside of your casing and check from time to time to ensure you have a clean fan and cooling fins. Blow using dusters to clean them out(after you open the case and take it outside of course), refraining from using brushes that everybody uses for it can cause static damage.

Cleaning External Connectors

These are the ports such as the USB, Video and others that usually hide at the back of your CPU unit. They do need attention from time to time and non-chlorinated contact cleaners will do the cleaning for you with little effort. Be sure to power down and unplug everything form the CPU unit. Leave the CPU unplugged for a few minutes and touch the casing to dissipate static electricity that can damage components.

Remember to purchase products that are designed for cleaning sensitive equipment (the term sensitive usually indicates expensive), but the effort and investment will surely be worth the effort. Apply the cleaner in bursts at the ports and allow to dry( which depends on the product so read the labels) and re-assemble your computer.

This cleaning process will solve intermittent USB connection and other problems that defy diagnosis so life becomes a little easier and computer usage more enjoyable, till the next crash.

UPS Trouble

A malfunctioning UPS can fail when needed or simply irritate you with constant beeping, a way for the built in electronics to tell you that something’s wrong. Many would take the unit in for repair but some daring (another word for advanced knowledge in electronics and the dangers of electricity) people can refurbish a defective UPS at a fraction of the cost. How could this be, well one of the most common area of concern is the battery/ies that stores electricity for use during unstable power or lack of it. The most common type used are sealed lead acid types that are still the cheapest ones around.
Remember, the innards of the UPS contains high-voltage current that can kill if you do not know what you are doing! Locate the battery packs and remove the positive and negative terminal connectors. Note down the model and type and get yourself replacements. Re-install and re-assemble the unit, ensuring polarities are correct and that you charge the unit prior to connecting your computer to it.
I cannot reiterate the danger so do be careful and if you do not know a thing or two of what you are about to do, DON”T RISK IT.

Screech….ing hard drive – Installing a New Hard Drive(Part 5)

If you do not have a secondary drive, better get hold of one fast but try to determine the type of the drive the system board supports (IDE, SCSI, ATA or SATA) so you buy the right one. If the drive type is no longer available (most areas have already phased out IDE drives being replaced by SATA drives), then you might be in for more of an overhaul rather than a troubleshooting expedition. A change in most of the parts may be necessary and the files that have to be transferred might be done on another computer which still supports your drive type or by the computer shop should you like them to do so(for a fee of course. Professional data retrieval would be too expensive for the ordinary PC and the data stored in it). Remove the plastic sheath or case of the new drive and check the jumper settings.

Screech….ing hard drive – Re-configuring the secondary Drive (Part 4)

Now, to make the secondary drive your primary drive (after you have transferred all necessary files to that said drive), open the casing and locate your hard drive. Don’t forget to discharge any static electricity by touching the casing for a few seconds to ground yourself discharging the offending static charge in your body. Turn the power off and remove all the cables from the rear and front of the casing. Unscrew the hard drives and try to find the master and slave which can be seen in the jumper settings near the drive connector, also disconnect the power supply from the drives. If you have managed to identify the master and slave drives, remove the failing drive and change the jumper setting of the slave to configure it into the master drive(this would be easier if the master and slave were both formatted with their own MBR’s or main boot records). Connect all necessary cables and power up your computer and begin the setup procedure of your OS. Once the OS is re-set-up, reinstall all applications, drivers and other programs you may need and you can now transfer the copied files to their rightful place for use.

Screech….ing hard drive – Don’t count on System Restore Points (Part 3)

Don’t count on system restore for this one for it only works best for software errors and not for hardware failure. If you do not have a secondary hard disk installed, or you might not have enough space to house all your files and the OS in the drive you were left with, then sadly you have to get a new drive to augment or replace the drive that is about to fail considering the fact that the failing drive hasn’t seized up yet. If that were the case, you can curse all you want but say good bye to all your documents and important files whatever type they may be.

Screech….ing hard drive – Moving or copying the files (Part 2)

Even new drives can crash if there was a problem within the manufacturing process. They have been tested and tested again before delivery to the store but defects do get through the testing programs. If you happen to have more than one drive on your PC, that would be nice and would make the copy process easier. Just select all the files you need and copy them into a temporary folder where you can retrieve them later in the other drive once it is set up to boot as the primary drive. The primary or master drive is the one that has the operating system installed onto it which in many cases would be Windows.

CPU failure

If you experience frequent CPU failures and get feedback from the store that the power supply has blown. Try to get a larger capacity or higher rated power supply. You might have too many devices hooked up to the power supply (internal and externally) both of which take power from the same power supply if they have no individual power adapter. Say if you have a 300 or 400 watt power supply, try getting hold of a 500 watt or higher model and try to get the bit pricy one so it would last. Repetitive power supply failures can cause damage to the internal parts of your CPU and even the board itself which has built in fuses to protect the Microprocessor unit itself from such damage. If the board has also failed, you would have to get another board to transfer the cpu onto.

Windows error

If your PC boot�s up but doesn�t load windows, then it might have been shut down without using the shutdown facility provided. To fix it, simply press F7 and select safe mode from the command line menu and follow all in-screen instructions. Some files or system drivers get damaged by such events so have the driver cd�s at hand. Once the check disk facility finishes, you should be able to gain access to your PC normally. If it still won�t load properly, try shutting down and re-starting for there might be some corrupted programs that need to be restored. Try getting the windows installation CD�s and re-install windows to restore all the damaged system files.

Screech….ing hard drive – Inspecting the PC (Part 1)

Well, this might not be a sound you would want to hear from your hard drive, for it might be in it’s death throes. The screeching sound may be the bearings that make the platters spin breaking down or they have been in use for so long they have worn out the hard metal coatings on the teeny tiny bearings. The first thing you do is to copy as much data that you can to another hard drive to prevent total disaster. Most drives will continue to function for sometime before total failure of the drive. You’ll be glad to know that they have become more reliable than ever but that does not mean totally.